Early in the spring of 1847, Governor French, of Illinois, issued a call for volunteers
to go to Mexico, and under this call Edward E. Harvey, of Elgin, and William G. Conklin and Lewis A. Norton, of
St. Charles, raised a company of infantry, reporting to the governor for duty about the 15th of June. The company
was promptly accepted, and about the 5th of July received marching orders, and proceeded to Alton, Illinois, where
it was mustered into service on the 20th of the same month.

The company was assigned to the Sixth Regiment Illinois Infantry, commanded by Colonel Collins, of Jo Daviess county.
Lieutenant Colonel Hicks and Major Livingston were both from Jefferson county. The regiment mustered 1,139 men,
and consisted of twelve companies, of which one (Company I) was from Kane county, the others being one each from
Jefferson, Fayette, Greene, Boone, Monroe, Washington, Franklin, Warren. Madison, and two from Jo Daviess. From
Alton the command proceeded on board a Mississippi transport to New Orleans, thence on the steamship "Ohio"
to Vera Cruz. Mexico. At that point the regiment was divided; the first battalion, consisting of Companies A, D,
E, F, and H, under Colonel Collins, was for a time stationed at the San Juan bridge, on the national road, where
there was some skirmishing, in which one man was killed and two were wounded. The second battalion, consisting
of Companies B, C. G, I. and K, under Lieutenant Colonel Hicks, was sent to Tampico, where it did garrison duty
until relieved by a Louisiana regiment, when it proceeded to Vera Cruz and marched inland toward the City of Mexico.

Company I lost, from sickness, thirty-four men, including Captain Harvey. Lieutenant Norton was on detached service
during most of his term, acting as quartermaster and commissary. The regiment remained until the close of the war.
when it returned to Alton, and was there mustered out of service. Lieutenant William G. Conklin afterward, during
the war of the Rebellion, served as battalion major in the Eighth Illinois Cavalry. The recruiting headquarters
of the above company, which saw hard service during its period of enlistment in Mexico, were at St. Charles.

During its term of service the regiment lost three hundred and thirty-two men, who died of disease, four killed
in battle, one hundred and thirty-five discharged by surgeon, thirteen transferred or resigned, eighteen by desertion,
and received seventy-two recruits. At the final muster-out at Alton, in the latter part of July, 1848, there remained
but three hundred and sixty-seven of the one thousand, one hundred and thirty-nine who had gone bravely out but
a year before, and this handful of survivors returned in such a state of physical prostration and general ill health
that a number died after reaching Alton. Lieutenant Conklin, the only one of the commissioned officers of Company
I living in 1888, removed some years before that from St. Charles to De Soto, Wisconsin.